Meet your new My Tasks

I’m running into the issue of updating a due date for a task when it’s in a section with a rule but when the rule is ran, it does not update the task into the new correct section.

Once again, Asana makes a comprehensive, workflow-breaking change without warning and without any transition period, then has to scramble to try to bring back the critical features that were removed. This one though is probably the worst. I used to brag to people about Asana because of the novel “New/Upcoming/Later” scheme that worked so beautifully, especially for personal task management (i.e., My Tasks). Now this is gone and Asana feels like just another clunky task management tool with way too much clicking around the screen. My issues (the same as many):

  • Today, Upcoming, and Later are now just generic sections. No keyboard shortcuts to navigate between them (the workaround shortcuts are no good)
  • My previous “subsections”, which I used regularly, have been converted to full sections which destroys how I used them
  • Recurring tasks showing up in Recently Assigned. This is absolutely terrible.
  • Importantly, the new rules do NOT recapitulate the old priority system for one main reason for me: I do not want a task in the Recently Assigned section with a due date of today to go in the Today section. I manually review the tasks in “Recently assigned” each day to confirm if they’re needed, put them in projects, etc. This was a critical part of my daily routine and workflow. So the new Rules do not substitute the old, very smooth way of automatically sorting things.

Very disappointed in Asana, which I used to brag about so highly.

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The task will only move sections when it hits a specific trigger - it’s a shame we can’t set a range of due dates in a rule - something like “greater than 1 day, less than 7 days” so that a task I date for a few days from now will get moved tonight. That task isn’t going to move until it hits the ‘today’ rule.

In fairness the above behaviour is no different to ‘pre-rule’ times, but rules were an opportunity to make a great product even better…

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Couldn’t you create a rule to move recurring tasks into whatever section you wanted to upon creation? Might require adding a tag or use of a custom field to note that they are recurring (don’t think rules today can “see” that), but then you could have the rule move it to whatever place.

I would advise against creating any rules just now to try and work around the My Tasks recurring-task behavior. Asana has said they’ll soon be improving (or some might say “repairing”) the behavior of recurring tasks in My Tasks, so if it were me, I’d wait - IMO not worth potentially spending time on something you’ll likely be throwing away soon.

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I’ve been using Asana for 8+ years and the new MyTasks is total crap. Is there a button to go back to the main MyTasks dashboard that made me love and recommend Asana?

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No, there is not.

Hey @Emily_Roman thanks for the heads-up on this! Howcome these shortcut keys don’t work in board view though and only work in List View :frowning_face:

Hi @Kyle_Bruner

Just wanted to check on a couple of things…

My understanding this would only occur if you set a rule for the Recently Assigned Section… I don’t have rules associated with that section and any Task assigned to me stays there until I move it…

I also used Subsections under the Today Section which I moved task manually into previously. These still work for me without issue, and in somecase slightly easier now that there is the toggle to move tasks to the section without having to drag. Can you elaborate on how yours are broken?

Yes agree that no Shortcuts and the Recurring task problem are not good but Asana have committed to fixing those soon.

Jason.

@Jason_Woods

For the recently assigned, the issue for me is with due date-based rules. Based on my tests, if I create a task today and make it due tomorrow, as soon as it’s tomorrow it automatically puts it in the Today view if I use a due date-based rule (the only kind I can make as a non-pro user). However I don’t want this. I want to review it manually in the “Recently assigned” section first. It’s just part of my workflow.

For the subsection, I also used one subsection under “Today” called “To Sort”. any tasks under upcoming or later would automatically go under this subsection, then I would sort them by priority for the day. I guess I could make a rule workaround to accomplish the same kind of thing…

At the end of the day here, I think we can all agree that it’s not the specifics that are at issue. The issue is 1) You changed the structure and didn’t warn me about it, 2) it broke my workflow, and 3) I can’t change it back. That’s the issue here.

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In case you missed it among the 200+ poss above, my article:

shows my simple workaround, a dashed line, that allows me to triage tasks and rule updates so nothing happens without my review; it seems like that addresses at least a piece of your workflow. Not perfect, but best workaround I know of for now.

Hope that helps a little,

Larry

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My challenge is with recurring tasks. When I complete one, the next one automatically shows up in ‘Recently Assigned’. It might be due in a week, two weeks, a month, or some other timeframe in the future.

These recurring tasks used to stay buried in either ‘Upcoming’ or ‘Later’, and would automatically appear in ‘Today’ when their due date arrived. I relied heavily on this workflow.

Is there a way to create a rule to replicate this functionality? Even if it’s for paid users only, that’s fine.

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Hi @Robin_Eldred,

Asana has said they’ll soon be improving (or some might say “repairing”) the behavior of recurring tasks in My Tasks. so hopefully you’ll have some relief soon!

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Thanks for the update, Phil. Much appreciated, and fingers are crossed.

Hi, I just got the new “My tasks”. Love the rules. :grinning:

Any way to delete the four default sections?
I can apparently delete the sections apart from the “Recently assigned” only in board view, is it by design?

If a delete a section, do I delete the tasks in that section? If the tasks are not deleted from the section I delete, where do they go?

Answers to those questions will get me started with the new “My tasks”, for the time being, thanks.

Hi Patrick,

You can delete any section in the new My Tasks except for “Recently assigned” (which you can rename and move, but not delete).

However, a section has to be empty - have no tasks in it (including completed tasks) - in order to delete it. So you’ll need to delete or move tasks out of a section before you can get rid of that section.

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A post was split to a new topic: Do guests have the ability to set custom rules on a business tier workspace?

A post was split to a new topic: How to use the rules feature to organise the task in sections in My Tasks?

Hi everyone - thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. We really appreciate your insights and your input is incredibly important as we continue to make My Tasks more powerful.

I’ve been reading your comments and I wanted to provide a little bit of clarity about the roll out and feature requests for this launch. The migration of Free and Premium customers is almost complete, and we’ll begin to roll out Business and Enterprise customers soon. We’re being intentional and thoughtful about slowly rolling out the updated My Tasks to ensure that all customers have the best experience and don’t encounter any unexpected behavior during the roll out. Thanks for your patience, we appreciate how excited you are about the new My Tasks experience!

Keyboard shortcuts

I also want to take this opportunity to share that we’ve just released Keyboard shortcuts for My Tasks sections! :tada: You can now use two different keyboard shortcuts to quickly move tasks that are assigned to you between the sections in your My Tasks.

  • Use Tab-Y when the task pane is open and the task is assigned to you to open the section mover menu for your My Tasks.
  • Use Tab-U when you have one or more tasks selected to open the section mover menu for these tasks (this works in both projects and in My Tasks!)

Once the menu is open, you can navigate it with the arrow keys and hit enter to select the section. We are going to keep iterating on this feature to make it even better!

Recurring tasks in the “Recently assigned” section

We are working on a fix for this issue and we hope to have news soon. I’ll share any updates as soon as I have any! In the meantime, you can share your feedback here: Recurring tasks show as “Recently Assigned” in My Tasks

Lastly, please note I’m closing this conversation for now to avoid any further confusion and keep this post as visible as possible. I will re-open this thread as soon as we have updates to share over the coming weeks. Again, we really appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to share every detail with our product team so we can continue improving My Tasks.

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